Death Wave

6

So, are you going to introduce me?” Dean asked as he drove the Hunter south.

“Masha, this is my friend Charlie Dean,” Akulinin said in English. “Charlie? Maria Alekseyevna. She works in the morgue.”

“There’s a conversation stopper,” Dean said. “I remember you, Ms. Alekseyevna. You were telling Vasilyev where to get off.”

“Call me Masha,” she said.

“You speak excellent English.”

“She’s from Brighton Beach, Charlie! Tell him, Masha!”

“It’s true. I grew up in Ilya’s old neighborhood!”

“Remember the Royal Pizzeria, right there under the Brighton Avenue tracks?”

“I do.”

“Sounds like old home week,” Dean said dryly. “Ilya? Better break out the weapons.”

“Got ’em right here.” A foam-filled aluminum case hidden under one of the seats held two Makarov PM semiautomatic pistols and several full magazines. The weapons were the Russian equivalent of the Walther PP series but would not shout “foreign spy” if they were found in a search. Dean heard the snap-click of a magazine being inserted and a round being chambered.

Akulinin handed him one, butt first. “Round chambered, safety on,” he said.

Dean pocketed the small weapon. It wouldn’t be much in a firefight, but anything was better than nothing. “So, Masha,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Masha filled Dean in as they drove, telling him about her family’s move back to Russia, her father sending her to Dushanbe, and how she’d worked for Dr. Shmatko now for two years.

Dean caught Akulinin’s glance in the rearview mirror. “Sharkie, this is so against regs.”

“I know — but we can’t leave her for Vasilyev, can we?”

“No. No, we can’t now.”

“Sharkie?” Masha asked.

“It’s the name,” Akulinin told her, rolling his eyes.

“Ah! Akula. Shark.”

“You’re quick,” Dean said.

“Charlie,” Jeff Rockman said, interrupting. “They’re throwing out a cordon. Roadblocks on Rudaki at the Medical Institute in the north, at the university in the south. They’ve already blocked off the bridges over the Varzob, west of you, and they’re putting units out on Mirzo Tursunzade to the east.”

“Talk me through it,” Dean said. “I’ve got a major drag crossing just up ahead.”

“That’s in front of Dushanbe University. Turn left.”

“That’ll take us back to Rudaki.”

“Affirmative.”

“They have that roadblock in place yet?”

“We’re working off a satellite map here, Charlie. We heard them calling for a roadblock in front of the university. Don’t know if it’s in place yet.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out.”

Traffic was heavy at the intersection with Rudaki, which seemed to be the main north-south thoroughfare through the city. Cars and trucks honked continuously, and a harried-looking policeman stood in the intersection, trying to direct traffic away from Rudaki, which was completely clogged toward the north. The cars in Dean’s lane inched ahead.

“Masha,” Akulinin said, leaning forward from the backseat, “we’re not going to be able to go back to your apartment for your things. Vasilyev will have your records checked to learn where you live. Guaranteed he’ll soon have some interior troops on the way there in case you show up.”

“That’s okay, Ilya. There’s nothing there I need.”

“Good.”

The line of cars moved ahead a few more yards toward the intersection, then halted again as several police cars worked their way through the congestion, blue lights flashing. Dean described the scene ahead.

“Turn right if they’ll let you,” Rockman told him. “That’ll put you south on Rudaki, past the university.”

“Okay … here we go. I’m signaling … he’s waving me through …”

They made the turn. Ahead, in front of the main entrance to the university, more policemen were moving cars to block traffic, and Dean could see one man in an army camouflage uniform holding an AK assault rifle.

“Shit. They’ve got us blocked. Okay … wait a second …”

The street was utter chaos, with halted vehicles and shouting drivers. To the right, however, was a broad walkway, crowded with pedestrians, flanked by trees. Dean hauled the steering wheel over and accelerated, bumping up onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered, some shaking fists or gesticulating as Dean nudged ahead through the crowd. The soldier shouted something unheard in the din as he unslung his rifle. More pedestrians scattered, and Dean put his foot down on the gas, sending the right-side wheels jouncing up onto the broad concrete steps in front of the main university building. A crowd of students spilling out of nearby dormitories appeared to be cheering.

The soldier let loose with a burst of full-auto gunfire, but it was aimed high, up into the air. Dean swerved past a clump of huge trees and bumped back onto the street, which, south of the roadblock, was nearly deserted.

He floored it as another burst of gunfire snapped after them. A white star appeared high on the rear windshield as a round struck the metal frame above it and ricocheted. Another round smashed Dean’s drivers-side mirror. On the right, he spotted the Dushanbe Fire Station, painted a startlingly bright shade of pink but with more traditionally red trucks parked inside the open bays.

“Passing the firehouse on my left!” Dean called. “Turning left!” He swerved the Hunter across oncoming traffic and ducked into a side street.

“That’s going to take you into a residential district, Charlie. A maze of narrow streets, lots of twists and turns. We’ll guide you …”

Dean decided that just maybe there actually were times when having your boss looking over your shoulder and micromanaging the situation was a good thing. With Rockman following his progress on the map back at the Art Room and guiding him through the warren of narrow streets and alleys, he could pay attention to the driving. The Art Room was also able to keep him up-to-date on police calls and radio reports, the signals picked up by one of the NSA’s SIGINT satellites and transmitted back to Fort Meade for translation and analysis.

They might, just possibly, get away with this …

Rubens walked into a room dark with mahogany paneling and plush carpeting, dominated by a long, massive conference table, and found one of the last remaining openings. He noticed Debra Collins’ glance from across the table as he took his seat. He nodded at her, but she ignored him, turning instead to watch George Francis Wehrum taking the podium at the front.

Some of the people there were NSC staffers. The rest were a mixed lot of military officers from the Joint Chiefs and personnel from the NRO, the Department of Intelligence, the CIA’s Operations Directorate — that was Collins and the aide seated beside her — and the Department of Energy. The session this morning was a planned briefing by several U.S. government intelligence agencies for the NSC’s Presidential Advisory Staff.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming.” Wehrum was chief aide to ANSA, the advisor on national security affairs. His boss hadn’t arrived yet but was expected momentarily. “We have several important briefs on the agenda this morning. It’s going to be a long session. I will remind those present that information discussed in this room should be restricted to Top Secret and below.”

The National Security Council was comprised of about one hundred staff members working in one of the basement levels of the White House, a labyrinthine fortress with security almost as vigilant and as uncompromising as it was for the Puzzle Palace — with ID checks, a retinal scan, and a stroll through a brand-new backscatter X-ray scanner that could electronically peer through both clothing and hair.

Technically, the NSC was chaired by POTUS, the President of the United States, and its statutory attendees included the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense. The senior military advisor was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the intelligence advisor was the director of national intelligence.

The meeting this morning, though, didn’t rate attendance by such high-ranking luminaries. Its purpose was strictly to serve as a session for presentations by various intelligence groups, briefing ANSA on several key situations or operational deployments.

Most of the people at the table were well known to Rubens, but at least there was now a new ANSA. The previous advisor on national security affairs had been Debra Bing, an unpleasant woman with political and personal power agendas that had often conflicted with a clear understanding of the information provided by the intelligence community. She hadn’t been fired so much as promoted sideways; she was over at Foggy Bottom now, working for the secretary of state.

Rubens could not imagine a better move for the woman.

The new ANSA was a retired Marine four-star general, John L. James. The President’s appointment of James had been a real shock to Beltway insiders; the current POTUS was not seen as a friend of the military. Speculation and outright gossip held that James was nonconfrontational, had no personal agenda or strong ideological leanings, and could evaluate ideas dispassionately whether they came from the left or the right. Historically, the NSC had often been blocked or sidelined in the rough-and-tumble politics required to gain and hold the President’s ear.

James was well respected by nearly everyone in town and was known as a team player. With the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the director of central intelligence, and the President’s chief of staff all battling with the NSC for presidential access, it would take a no-nonsense combat veteran as well as a diplomat to thread the labyrinth of Washington’s halls of power. Hell, the guy was a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. If anyone could handle the job, he could.

Rubens knew a number of U.S. Marines, both active duty and retired. Charlie Dean was one. He wondered if the President knew just what he’d signed on for by appointing one as his advisor on national security.

“All rise,” Wehrum called from behind the podium. A moment later, General James strode into the room, followed by several aides and accompanied by Rodney C. Mullins, a congressman from New York and a prominent member of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubens had not been aware that Mullins was going to be present today.

“Sit down, sit down,” James growled at the room. He was known to dislike ceremony and protocol. “Sorry I’m late. The Honorable Mr. Mullins and I were held up in an Intelligence Oversight Committee meeting. Mr. Wehrum? What’s up first on the dog-and-pony show?”

“Sir … the Palestinian crisis. We have a report from the deputy DNI—”

“Let’s get on with it, then. What do you have for us, Mr. Scribens?”

Wehrum sounded annoyed by James’ bluntness — or perhaps it was by his dismissal of the briefing session as a dog-and-pony show, Pentagon slang for formal prepared briefings designed to please, rather than inform, high-ranking officers or civilians.

Rubens smiled inwardly. It was well known that Wehrum had expected to step into Bing’s shoes; she’d been grooming him as the next ANSA throughout most of her tenure, and James’ appointment must have been a bitter surprise. He took his seat, however, as Paul C. Scribens, one of four deputy directors of national intelligence, stood and walked to the podium.

It would be, as Wehrum had promised, a long session.

Ruebens wondered if Dean and Akulinin were clear yet, and back in contact with the Art Room.

“Net li oo vahs luchshi comatih?” Dean asked.

The white-haired woman peering through the cracked-open door looked him up and down, then stared past him at Akulinin and Masha. The crack closed, Dean heard the rattle of the chain lock, and then the door opened again. “Did anyone see you?” she asked in accented English. She was an older woman with gray hair and eyes that might have seen too much. Dean guessed that she might be in her sixties. “Did anyone follow you?”

“Not that we could see,” Dean told her. “All the excitement is over in the center of the city.”

“Excitement is right. You three have kicked over hornets’ nest. Get in, get inside.”

They’d parked the Hunter inside a shed behind the Adkhamov safe house. The woman running the house, Tatyana Konovalova, was a transplanted Russian who’d been recruited by the CIA in Moscow back in the bad old days of the Cold War. When her husband had moved to Dushanbe in the 1980s, she’d come along — and continued sending in reports about Russian troops in the area during the disastrous Soviet war in Afghanistan. Her husband, Viktor, had been a civilian, an engineer working on a pipeline project in Kabul, at least until the Mujahideen had caught him and slowly skinned him alive. She still kept a small altar to the man, with candles flanking his photograph on a table in her small foyer.

She remained on the CIA’s payroll, the money brought by a messenger from the U.S. Embassy in town each month. In CIA parlance, she was an agent, meaning a local recruited by a CIA officer. There would be at least one Agency officer stationed at the embassy, Dean knew, but he would be unwilling to get embroiled in an NSA op gone sour. Except for the offer of a place to stay for the night, Dean, Akulinin, and their unexpected tagalong would be on their own.

“Mrs. Konovalova doesn’t have access to another vehicle,” Dean said. He was sitting alone now, in one of three tiny bedrooms carved out of an attic. Beneath a steeply sloping ceiling, a small bed on rope springs was squeezed in between a wooden box that served as dresser, night table, and lamp stand and the stacks of dusty boxes and piles of paper common to any other attic in the world. It was just past nine. “We’re going to have to take the Hunter, and the MVD will have a description and a plate number.”

“The Firm has new plates for your car,” Jeff Rockman told him. “They’ll send them over by special messenger in a few hours. We’re also looking at how we can compromise the local LE net.”

The Firm — another insider’s term for the CIA. Maybe the three of them weren’t as alone as he’d thought. “LE net” meant the local law enforcement radio frequencies. The NSA possessed technologies that would allow them to infiltrate the Dushanbe police and MVD radio nets, not only to eavesdrop but also to plant misleading messages or information.

“Any data yet on Maria Alekseyevna?”

“There’s not a lot available, but from what we’ve been able to learn, her story checks out. There was an Alekseyevna family living in Brighton Beach until 2002. Moved to Moscow, where the mother died a year later. No information on the father or the daughter since.”

“How about a Dr. Shmatko?”

“A pathologist trained in Moscow. He received a posting to Dushanbe two years ago. It’s possible he was a family friend.”

“What are we going to do with her?” Dean asked. “We can’t throw her to the wolves.”

“If you can get her to the Afghanistan border, we’ll fly her out when we extract you. What happens to her after that …” Dean could almost hear Rockman’s shrug over the channel. “Mr. Rubens will have to be brought in. Special provisions might be arranged, but the boss will have to take that up with State.”

“She’s a good person,” Dean said. “She helped Ilya, didn’t turn him in when doing so might have earned her some brownie points.”

“We’ll just have to see how it plays out. First step is to get you the hell out of Tajikistan. I recommend you get some sleep now. You’ll be up early.”

“We’re all over that. Any word on getting quality satellite time?”

“Not yet. We’re on the NRO’s queue. The boss said he’s going to be talking to people later this morning.”

“It’s taking too long. By now, those suitcase nukes could be anywhere.”

“I hear you. Oh … but you’ll want to hear this. The photos Ilya got of those three stiffs in the morgue. We have positive IDs on all of them.”

“One of them is Zhernov.”

“He was styling himself Zhern at last report, as any good patriotic and anti-Russian Tajik would do. The guy with the mustache was Amirzai Shams, a Pashtun with connections to extremist Muslim factions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Both of them have long records with the Russian mafiya. Both had sizable traces of radiation on their hands.”

“And the Asian?”

“He’s the real puzzle in this mess. Major Kwok Chung On. PLA military intelligence. He was with a Chinese trade delegation in Dushanbe until four days ago, when he disappeared.”

“So what is he doing in Central Asia?”

“We’ve done some checking through our banking connections. Two weeks ago, the State Bank of Beijing transferred one point three billion dollars to a private account in Dushanbe. The size of the transaction raised flags at the Financial Desk.”

“I would imagine so.” The Financial Desk was the department within the NSA specifically tasked with tracking the flow of large amounts of money throughout the corporate world and across the international community. Identifying accounts used by various terrorist organizations, and freezing their assets, was quite possibly the most important weapon available in the long-term fight against groups like al-Qaeda. Follow the money, and you knew who was behind a group or an attack. Freeze or seize the money, and you paralyzed the group, making it harder for them to buy weapons, carry out operations, or provide for the families of suicide bombers.

To that end, the code monkeys working at the NSA had developed a number of CIPs, covert intrusion programs, software designed to infiltrate international banking networks, record transactions, and trace large-scale movements of currency and other assets.

“Who owned the Dushanbe account?” Dean asked.

“We don’t know, but the account was emptied four days ago.”

“When Major Kwok disappeared.”

“Exactly.”

“So,” Dean said, piecing it together, “Zhern and Shams, either one working with the Russian mafiya, transport twelve suitcase nukes from Stepnogorsk to Dushanbe. Kwok withdraws over a billion dollars … You know, that’s one big, unwieldy package.”

“Bearer bonds.”

“Okay. Kwok takes out over a billion in bearer bonds and uses them to pay Zhern and Shams, and probably another party as well, who takes over the nukes for the next leg in the journey. Kwok stays with Zhern and Shams—”

“We suspect they were driving him toward the Chinese border.”

“And Vympel, in the form of Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev, intercepts them.”

“In the mountains about seventy miles east of Dushanbe.”

“So … who has the nukes now? And where?”

“We don’t know the who. Our best guess about where … they left Ayni Airfield yesterday, maybe the day before, and are at or beyond the border with Afghanistan by now.”

“Why Ayni? They could have flown them out from Dushanbe Airport instead.”

“Probably because Dushanbe Airport is solidly under Russian control, with the 201st’s headquarters right next door. Political control out at Ayni is divvied up between Tajikistan, Russia, and India. They might actually have felt they had a better chance of smuggling the shipment in and out again at a smaller airfield with divided jurisdiction.”

“So … what now?” Dean asked. “We still need to find out what happened to the shipment, how they got it out of Ayni.”

“Our first requirement is to get you and Ilya out of Tajikistan,” Rockman told him. “We were looking at sending in a helicopter, picking you up at Ayni, or maybe someplace in the countryside, but things are too unsettled right now. The Indians have closed down Ayni — rumors of Pakistani terrorist-saboteurs in the area.”

“Hm. I wonder how that happened?”

“Once you have new plates and registration documents for your car, you can drive out. We’ll pick you up at Shir Khan, as originally planned. In the meantime, you need to catch up on your sleep.”

“Yes, Mother,” Dean said, in the tone of a sulky ten-year-old. Rockman was right, though. He was exhausted — and they would have to hit the road as soon as the plates and other gear arrived from the embassy.

He pulled off the rest of his Indian Air Force uniform and collapsed into the bed.

Akulinin was nearly asleep when the chirp of a floorboard brought him to full awareness. His hand found the pistol beneath his ancient mattress, and he sat up, peering into the darkness. Someone on the stairs?

The safe house’s attic was divided into three side-by-side bedrooms. Akulinin was in the middle room, the one with the stairs going down to the building’s second floor. If someone was coming up …

He heard a faint tap on the door to the right-side bedroom, then the click of a latch being dropped, the creak of a door opening a few inches in the darkness.

“Ilya?” The voice was a whisper, barely heard.

“Masha?” He kept his voice to a whisper as well.

“I … I can’t sleep. Can I come in … can I stay with you?”

“Of course! Come in!”

He tucked the pistol back into its hiding place. He felt rather than saw her standing next to the bed. He heard a rustle of clothing, and then she was slipping in beside him under the quilt.

He gathered her into his arms. She wasn’t wearing anything, and she was crying.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Will you … will you take me back to America? Back home?”

“I can’t promise anything,” he told her, “but I’ll do my very best. At least we can get you away from here.”

“Away from here would be very, very good.”

“You probably shouldn’t stay here,” he told her after a long, close embrace. “Mrs. Konovalova strikes me as the conservative type. I don’t think she would approve …”

“Mrs. Konovalova is a fussy old babushka,” Masha whispered in his ear. “She won’t ever know.”

“For a little while, then …”

Charlie Dean was very nearly asleep when a sound brought him wideawake. His hand found his Makarov PM beneath his pillow. A careless foot on a loose floorboard?

Squeak … squeak … squeak …

It took him long minutes to identify the sound. It was too regular, too rhythmic to be footsteps on squeaky floorboards. As he shifted in the bed, however, and the bed frame gave a mournful squeak with the movement, he realized what it must be.

Squeak … squeak … squeak …

Hiding the pistol again, he rolled over, his back to the gentle sounds from the bedroom next door.

Just so you get some sleep tonight, Ilya, he thought.

Soon he was asleep himself.

Squeak … squeak … squeak …

Jeff Rockman looked up, startled. The sound was coming over Ilya’s line. He’d thought Akulinin had taken off his clothes — including his belt-antenna — and left them out of range of his communicator implants when he’d gone to bed earlier. Apparently, his trousers were just close enough to pick up the signal from his implant.

“What is that noise?” he asked the technician sitting next to him at the console.

“Interference on the tactical channel?” she asked.

“Bozhe moy!” a voice said, a woman’s voice, speaking low but very clear, as though her mouth were close beside the microphone implanted in Akulinin’s skull.

“Kakya tebya hochu!”

Rockman exchanged a glance with the tech. He didn’t speak Russian, but it was the way the woman said it …

“Ah! Bistraye! Bistraye!”

Every word coming in over the communications channels of officers in the field was recorded, of course, for later analysis. Rockman had a feeling the analysts were going to enjoy this one.

“Gospodi! Kak mne horosho!”

The Old Man, however, was going to hit the roof.